


dearly beloved

by tirralirra



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Introspection, Italy, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Time Skip, Relationship Study, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28976949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tirralirra/pseuds/tirralirra
Summary: Sometimes it takes being in a new place to see things in a new light.....Kiyoomi goes on a trip with Atsumu.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 25
Kudos: 103





	dearly beloved

**Author's Note:**

> **CW:** Implied homophobia, as in, Sakusa and Atsumu are not comfortable being out as a couple, and are not out as a couple back in Japan.
> 
> There is much intertextuality here, but so as not to disrupt flow, there are no footnotes. Please review the (lengthy) ending notes for the fully intended references, and the thread eventually linked below for more in-depth information. Most in-text “quotes” are italicized.

_i. Fitting in_

Miya Atsumu travels like a tourist from the nineties, floppy bucket hat and over-large sunglasses, film camera swinging around his neck, and a fanny pack stuffed with essentials, though he wears it over his shoulder and swung around to the front. Lucky for him that these things are back in style. The rest of him is impeccably dressed as usual, which makes the juxtaposition funnier.

He is deliberately, casually, chic—as in not too casual, not too chic. The effort in looking effortless. You wouldn’t know it, maybe, if you didn’t look closely, or if you weren’t privy to the 4 a.m. panicked (re)packing spree that Atsumu went through the morning of their flight. As if he didn’t have half his bags packed a week before, but he just had to make _sure,_ Omi-kun, that he had everything and that everything matched and wasted no space, eking out every spare cubic centimeter of his carry-on and backpack.

Kiyoomi’s packing rituals don’t involve capsule wardrobes and packing cubes. His essentials mostly center around a tetris-puzzle of 100 milliliter bottles of sanitizer, moisturizer, and other toiletries that can fit into a single quart bag. A reasonable amount of disposable wipes, and reusable masks. Two neck pillows, because Atsumu will insist he doesn’t need one (but he always needs one). He packs the most recently clean clothes from his closet in a quantity that makes sense for the duration of the trip. Atsumu’s exasperated sigh at his clothing choices is probably because he matches by virtue of only buying clothes in the riveting shades of white, gray, and black, instead of any deliberate sense of fashion.

Atsumu fits in here, though. The throngs of tourists that flood the streets of Florence are sufficient camouflage with equally floppy hats and garish travel bags. There are packs of people from all over, their guides waving small flags and toting voice amplifiers, herding their charges along the winding streets. The buildings echo with a chorus of countless languages, punctuated by bursts of impassioned Italian.

Right now, Atsumu is nearly indistinguishable from the other people heaving up the narrow steps in the bones of the bell tower. Well, perhaps he’s noticeably unfazed by the height and exertion; they’re athletes, after all. What’s four-hundred more steps up the Campanile, after the four-hundred and sixty-three to the top of Il Duomo itself?

Even so, for all that they blend in with the crowd, it’s sort of odd, seeing Atsumu like this—just another tourist, a familiar image transposed on a new background. Doing things like everyone else is a strange feeling when every other part of their lives and their relationship have been backwards or sideways or somehow off the beaten path.

Here in Florence the beaten paths are obvious: grooves worn into cobblestones over centuries, paths carved into the streets they walk, the stones they tread. Walking the same paths as countless people and stories before them. Strange, then, how the two of them fit in here, amongst strangers, in a foreign land, one more tale on its well-storied paths.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like that at home, where they have to hide a piece of themselves. Pretending to walk the same narrow path as everyone else—job, house, wife, kids. This vacation is two-fold, then, from the reality of their work and from the facade of their normalcy.

===

_ii. A river runs through_

It was Atsumu’s idea, this trip. Ten days touring Tuscany, with an emphasis on Florence.

“Why not the rest of Italy? Or other parts of Europe? Since we’re going all the way anyways.” Kiyoomi had asked when Atsumu brought up the booking site on his phone.

“You’ll have plenty of time to explore that on your own, yeah? But you gotta get to know your new home base before you get there. Think of it like...a scouting trip.”

That’s what he said, but Kiyoomi knows this is more for Atsumu than for himself. He wants to see it, breathe it, know it. He needs to learn the place that Kiyoomi will call home for twelve months instead of their apartment in Wakae Higashimachi, tucked into the south end of Higashiosaka, right by the Daini Neya River that guides their running route every morning. 

There’s a river in Florence, too. It’s much larger, and much grander.

Here, on the steps of Piazzale Michelangelo, that river cuts an elegant line through the city. From this vantage, the Arno is a golden ribbon fringe to a postcard-worthy scene as the street lamps blink on in the twilight. The buildings on its banks create an irregular crenelation, while Palazzo Vecchio and the cathedral rise from an ocean of dusk and gold, piercing the dark sky.

Kiyoomi has lived by rivers all his life—the Sumida, the Kanda, now the Daini Neya. They taught him much. To shape your land slowly, over time, a creature of patience that wears new paths with deliberation. To be ever-shifting, and to flow from one movement to the next. That still waters run deep, and that all rivers run to the sea.

“Oi, Omi-kun,” Atsumu says, snapping his fingers in front of his face, snapping Kiyoomi back to the present, “you with me here?” 

In a little over six days they will take a flight back to Itami Airport. In a little under six months Kiyoomi will return for the start of the SuperLega season with APF Fiorentina.

 _Stay with me,_ Atsumu doesn’t say, hasn’t said. 

_Sorry,_ Kiyoomi thinks. “Sorry,” he replies, “I got a little lost in the view.”

Atsumu smirks, striking a pose. The dome of the cathedral arcs behind him, the hills fade into the crepuscular sky behind that. “I know I’m really that magnificent, Omi-kun, but maybe marvel at the architecture, huh?”

Kiyoomi snorts, grips Atsumu’s shoulders and turns him back to face the view, resting his head on his shoulder and his arms over his chest. They stay like that, huddled together in the twilight, the romance of couples taking selfies, students drinking on the steps, locals hawking their wares a swell of sound around them.

Rivers are the first language of a land’s blood, there before roads to shape people’s ways of life until people learn to shape it instead; even then, they are humbled before the power of a flood. You cannot build a city on a floodplain and expect to escape high water.

What, Kiyoomi wonders, will this new-old river bear on its currents to him? He’s seen its scars in the city, lines carved into stone as homage to high waters past. When the water recedes, a year and a half from now, where will its mark be on him?

===

_iii. These are things I know_

“You know, Kiyoomi, traveling with your significant other is a big deal,” Motoya had said to him right before this trip, plunking down in the seat next to him with his abomination of a frappuccino. “Traveling internationally even more so.”

“We’ve traveled together for international tournaments,” he offered, mostly tuning his cousin out in favor of imagining authentic Italian espresso in contrast to Motoya’s poor taste.

“Um, yeah, it’s not the same thing. You’ll learn a lot about him. And yourself,” he went on, and Kiyoomi thought that was dumb. Atsumu and Kiyoomi live together. They have for nearly half a year. There is nothing that cohabitation with one Miya Atsumu hasn’t taught him that Italy can, he thinks, stubbornly.

In truth, Kiyoomi does end up a little surprised on their first morning in the country together. Atsumu insists on running every morning—apparently even on vacation, even in a foreign land. Though that doesn’t really reveal anything that he didn’t already know in the abstract: Atsumu is stubborn, and likes routine.

They’re similar in that respect, but for Kiyoomi, vacation is vacation. He’s not going to take in Florence any differently by running through the streets at dawn, no matter what Atsumu says.

Instead, sunbeams cut through the shutters of their hotel room, slice into Kiyoomi’s consciousness, and ease him from the shallows of a morning snooze. He flops an arm into the space beside him, but Atsumu’s spot in the bed is long empty and cold. 

As if summoned by the thought, he hears the door lock click, and pushes himself up onto his forearms. Atsumu enters with the keycard in one hand, an absolutely stuffed paper bag in the other, and a pastry dangling from his mouth. His eyes widen comically at the sight of Kiyoomi staring back at him. 

Kiyoomi huffs a laugh. They’re in Italy, they’re in Florence. They’re on vacation, and their hotel window looks out on one of the most iconic cities in the world. Miya Atsumu unpredictably insists on running every morning despite it all, but still predictably overbuys pastries. He wants to kiss this idiot senseless.

“You’re such a glutton sometimes, Atsumu,” Kiyoomi says instead. 

“They’re for you, Omi-kun, you’re spoiled for choice like the picky brat you are. And excuse me, I’m not the one still lazing around in bed at,” he glances at his running watch, “eight forty-five a.m.”

“If I’ve learned anything about Italian time, that’s still early,” he says, rolling from the bed, and stretching out, joints crackling, then settling. “What’s the occasion? Hotel breakfast not to your liking?”

Atsumu quirks his mouth and shoves the bag into Kiyoomi’s hands. He elaborates as he rummages through his bag for a fresh outfit. “Nah, if you’re not going to join my run, then you need something sweet, stat. Puts you in an infinitely better mood to start the day. Endorphins one way or another, Mr. Secret Sweet-Tooth. Don’t need you biting heads off any poor bystanders today.”

Kiyoomi pauses, arrested in thought. He’s never thought of himself as a person who loves sweets, not after childhood; having them here has simply been a part of enjoying their trip. Does it really make such a difference, one that compels Atsumu to pre-emptively feed him sweets? And when did he notice it? Surely not in the few days they’ve been here, though all of their mornings before this trip have been spent in shared company on a run.

It’s just like Atsumu to turn all his expectations for himself upside down like this, in the most innocuous and charming of ways.

The scent of the pastries, sugar-sweet and cloying, wafts up from the bag, and something warm curls in Kiyoomi’s chest with it. 

_Learn a lot about him, and a lot about yourself, was it?_

===

_iv. On the edge of summer_

The Jackals lost in the semi-finals this year. The all star game is over, so here they are, trading in their courts for piazzas at the tail end of April. In Japan, the cherry blossoms would be falling like snow and heralding new beginnings. Here, curtains of wisteria drip from pergolas, and irises unfurl, flamboyant, under olive trees. Italian gardens invite a leisurely stroll, and they obey, unhurried, taking in the elegant landscaping that frame time-worn sculptures and elegant vistas of the city. It’s a taming of nature through symmetry and stone—nothing like the hanami of their home, but it feels both refreshing and melancholic all the same. 

It’s on the precipice to a Tuscan summer; the days dawn cool, but as the shadows stretch out after noon they take the air and work it over, press it between throngs of tourists and pass it through the stone pizza ovens, the sun-warmed courtyards fringed with plants, dancing off the red-orange terra-cotta roofs. It’s nearing uncomfortably warm by mid-afternoon when they finally meander down from the gardens and back towards the river for refreshment.

Kiyoomi only realizes his mistake once they’re standing in the full sun, leaning against the stone wall that frames the river, freshly-scooped gelato in cones. He hands his to Atsumu without a word, reaching down to peel off his jacket and secure it around his waist.

He glances up to see Atsumu’s sunglasses catch the midday glare as he gazes over the river, and for once Kiyoomi doesn’t despair at the way they obscure his eyes. Atsumu is vain enough to despise the tan lines from sunglasses, but conscientious enough to protect his eyes. This usually means little to Kiyoomi, save for times when he wishes he could see into them clearly.

Here, though, they mean privacy, anonymity, another tourist, another passerby. They are less anonymous than they thought they might be, what with the countless number of fellow tourists from Japan and their last triumphant Olympic appearance still fresh in mind.

The café they left had a wall of pictures showing various celebrities indulging in gelato at the very same shop. They were candid, cute, and humanizing, maybe. Still, Kiyoomi prickles at the thought, being caught in the most simple of enjoyments, immortalized as décor. They’re not that famous, but still, Kiyoomi wonders. He worries.

Anonymity is a double-edged sword. He feels safer than ever and terrified at the thought. The checks and balances that carefully maintain their public appearance as teammates, just friends, mean nothing here, and it emboldens Kiyoomi.

“Omi, your gelato is going to melt,” Atsumu says between licks of his own. Kiyoomi’s scoops sweat and build at the edge of the cone, about to crest over. One solitary drip finally forges a trail down Atsumu’s hand. Inexplicably, Kiyoomi has the urge to lick it away. It would be indescribably dirty, unapologetically unsanitary, absolutely—

“Hot, huh,” Atsumu says, handing the cone back when Kiyoomi finishes fussing with his clothes. “Didn’t think it’d get so balmy this time of year.”

The heat of the afternoon presses down heavily on Kiyoomi’s rationality. Sweat beads on his brow. He could reach out and take Atsumu’s hand. What’s stopping him here, now?

Atsumu startles when he catches his hand. He doesn’t pull away though, merely looks back at Kiyoomi. It’s now infuriating that he can’t see Atsumu’s eyes clearly. He squeezes Atsumu’s hand with urgency.

“How far are we from the hotel?” he asks, the impatience not quite absent from his tone. He doesn’t even wait for an answer, starts gently tugging at Atsumu’s hand and walking vaguely back along the river. Atsumu follows without resistance, huffing a laugh.

“Not that I’m complaining, Omi-kun, but what’s got you in a hurry?”

“It’s hot.”

“Well, finish your gelato~?” Atsumu sing-songs, working to loosen Kiyoomi’s grip on his hand, only to entwine their fingers. What a flirt.

“I’m now in the mood for something else,” Kiyoomi shoots back with a deliberate stroke of his finger on the pulse of Atsumu’s wrist, like striking a match. He looks over his shoulder and Atsumu’s cheeks are tinged pink, maybe red from the sun, maybe something else, but it thrills him either way. That he, Sakusa Kiyoomi, can be a firestarter too.

===

_v. Keep me safe in your kitchen garden_

They must’ve passed this building a dozen times already over their stay, criss-crossing the city and the river from one scenic spot to the next. It’s a solid rectangle of a structure and a floor higher than any of its neighbors. Intricate, Gothic-style stonework arches decorate the outside, alternating with elaborate statues of stone and bronze in equally decorated niches, high above street level. Inside is a church, but they don’t go through the main doors. 

Instead, the back entrance takes them up a narrow stairwell. It opens into a large space, the entire upper floor of the building, as one room. The same statues that decorate the outside sit on raised platforms here in regular intervals around the room, accentuated by the high arc of the ceiling. Light streams through the near floor-to-ceiling windows. The space almost feels more sacred than the heavily ornate church below their feet—it is pure light, stone, and metal. Every statue is near twice the height of a person, easily so on the platforms. They watch over the visitors with their impenetrable gazes, the folds in their metal and stone clothes capturing an elegant motion, frozen in time. 

It is not these statues that are the copies, but the ones outside; these are the originals. Spared from the elements and beholden only to the passive element of time.

That’s certainly one way to keep something precious, Kiyoomi muses, admiring Saint Stephen’s neat coif of bronze hair. Create a copy for the outside, keep the true original within. A face for the public, a face for the private. One to weather the storms and one to examine only twice a week on Mondays from ten to five and Saturdays from twelve to two.

He looks over to Atsumu, arms crossed and head cocked, face scrunched up like he doesn’t know what to make of the bronze figure in front of him. 

“What do you think?” Kiyoomi ventures. Viewing art with Miya Atsumu is at turns both profound and uncomplicated.

Atsumu scrunches his nose. “The eyes are a little unsettling, if I’m being honest.”

Kiyoomi sidles up behind Atsumu to match his point of view. The eyes in the statue are oddly distinct from the rest of the aged bronze patina. It would be further jarring if they looked back at their viewers, but the statue gazes off to its right, unbothered by its audience.

Atsumu leans back a little, shoulders pressing lightly into Kiyoomi’s chest. He tilts his head back to catch Kiyoomi’s gaze. “Kind of weird though, if you ask me. Putting all sorts of money and effort into making replicas for the outside. Like, neat, but a little sad? All those artists’ hard work back however long ago just up and copied like it’s nothing.”

“Do you think there’s anything lost in the copies outside? The intent, or the artistry?” Kiyoomi, curious, has no idea where this conversation may go.

“Nah,” Atsumu says after a moment, “but isn’t part of the beauty of something seeing it in its element? Letting time do its work, too. Like that one famous statue, the lady without arms. She had arms once, right? But it’s more famous now without ‘em, isn’t it?”

Kiyoomi wants to laugh. Trust Miya Atsumu to bring up Venus de Milo in passing during a casual remark about the authenticity of replicas and art as it is intended to be seen.

“But I like this place,” Atsumu finishes, “it feels good here.” They are standing in a warm patch of sunlight, shadows stretching long over the floor. Kiyoomi feels the warmth of the sun on his back like a phantom embrace. Atsumu breathes out slowly in front of him. “None of the pomp and circumstance of some of the other places. Just the time and space to look real close.”

Time and space to look closely, truly.

===

_vi. Food be the music of love_

It wouldn’t be a trip with a Miya without an abundance of food. Atsumu has an excellent sense of direction, but secretly Kiyoomi thinks it has less to do with well-practiced spatial awareness and more to do with some sixth sense for good food. He navigates the city with landmarks made out of restaurants and food carts, cafés and mercatos. One day they eat the most exquisite pasta Kiyoomi has ever encountered. The next Atsumu doesn’t quite convince him to taste his lampredotto (he does convince him to share a late-night kebab after they get tipsy at a tapas bar, the chianti gone to full and heady effect). They’ve been to a different gelateria every day—sometimes more than one.

In front of them, a cheerful, mustachioed man pulls ingredients from the deli counter and stacks them neatly on bread, drizzling sauces and oils that Kiyoomi can’t bother to pronounce but can’t wait to taste. He hands over two paninis wrapped in waxed paper, and they wander down the street a bit to a large plaza to enjoy their lunch in the sun.

“Wait, one sec. Can you hold this for me, so I can get the best angle?” Atsumu says, waving his sandwich in front of Kiyoomi after they settle down on a bench with their meal.

Kiyoomi sighs, but obliges. It also wouldn’t be a trip with Atsumu without an abundance of photos; Atsumu’s timeline is a carefully curated record of everything he eats, like he joined Instagram in 2014 and never left that time or aesthetic. 

“Okay hold, like that, and—perfect” he angles his phone weirdly and finishes the photo. “Thanks,” he says, thumbing through the photo options and no doubt picking some cheesy filter. “Sad that I can’t include the best part though,” he looks back at Kiyoomi with a wink.

Kiyoomi bares his teeth in fake disgust. It’s not like they want to flaunt their trip together anyways. He has an account, but rarely posts, so he leaves it to Atsumu to document their (food) adventures. As far as Kiyoomi’s followers know, he’s in Japan enjoying the off-season.

“Not that I would ever want to stop you, but I find it ironic how many photos you take for the sake of...posterity? Who needs memories now, huh?” Kiyoomi jokes light-heartedly after Atsumu finishes his post and takes his food back.

Atsumu pouts. “Omi-kun, stop giving me shit for things from high school.” He takes a bite then, and the pout disappears, replaced by sheer satisfaction. They stay like that for a while, savoring the food slowly and sunbathing like locals. Quiet and content.

“You know, one time I gave Suna some crap about being on his phone and recording stuff all the time,” Atsumu says without preamble, “and man, I don’t know where he got this, but he said something like ‘you know, Atsumu, historians in the future are going to love our generation, because we document everything, all the time—who we were with, where we were, what we ate, what we thought.'

“Imagine that, history in my shitty photos of a sandwich, Omi-kun,” he finishes lightly, biting into his sandwich again with gusto.

And Kiyoomi does imagine. He imagines all the little moments that Atsumu has stored on his phone, all the pieces of their time together without showing them together. An aesthetic birds-eye shot of their meal on a date, Kiyoomi’s hands out of view. Coffee, steam rising artfully in the morning light, prepared in the mugs gifted by his sister. Drinks, sweating condensation on the tabletop at their favorite izakaya, Atsumu’s beer next to Kiyoomi’s umeshu. They take photos of each other occasionally, but rarely photos together.

Kiyoomi’s camera roll is mostly referential—shots of posters for movies to watch or books to buy, photos of signs for navigation, or of the _exact_ brand and variety of skin care product that Atsumu needs from the store, thanks Omi-kun~. There are a few candid shots of Atsumu, but he doesn’t usually think to pull out his phone and document the everyday extraordinary of Miya Atsumu. 

“Okay, then one more question. Serious, this time,” Kiyoomi knocks their shoulders together. “Why do you have a film camera if you just take everything with your phone anyways?” He pokes the camera that dangles from Atsumu’s neck. He’s yet to see him use it. “Don’t tell me it’s a fashion statement.”

Atsumu doesn’t say anything at first, chews thoughtfully for a bit. They’re not in a rush. Finally, he swallows, and answers.

“I think...I think it’s something about the extra actions? I like the feeling of taking the photo, all the little knobs and buttons. I think it helps me remember better,” Atsumu runs a finger over a dial on the top. “Like sure, the photo will be a memory, and my phone’s photos do enough to remind me too, but more than that, I remember all the bits that it took to get that photo. So like, I think I remember better that way.”

He actually does pick up the camera then, and looks through the viewfinder, pointing it aimlessly at the ground, turning the dials and twisting the lens slightly. Then, at the last moment he twists it upwards, catches Kiyoomi’s face with the rattle of the shutter before he can even react. Kiyoomi scowls, and Atsumu laughs.

“Plus, don’t you think it’s kind of fun? I’m the only one who knows how I saw something, until the film develops. It’s like a little secret between me and the camera.”

===

_vii. And I bask in your warmth_

The light in Tuscany is different. The way it plays across verdant, rolling hills, the dark smudges of the cypress trees against the sky, and the blue shadows it throws between them all. 

Some half-remembered jargon from high school physics tells him it has to do with the particles in the atmosphere, the scattering of light, but the how doesn’t matter much to Kiyoomi in this moment. All this moment is for Atsumu, brilliant under the Tuscan sun.

The sun sets slow over Montepulciano, easing molten over the hills. The city’s stonework is awash with its orange glare, but Atsumu glows brighter even amongst it all. 

They ventured out for a day trip to the countryside, tasting wine and cheeses, exploring even twistier and tinier alleyways than those in the city. But long after they return, to their hotel, to their home, Kiyoomi thinks he won’t recall the taste of any of those things. What he’ll remember is the striking landscape around them, and Atsumu in front of it all. 

“Kiyoomi, smile!” Atsumu calls back to him from ahead on a narrow walk. His camera is up, steadied with both hands. Kiyoomi smiles, the camera clicks. Atsumu drops it to his chest and walks back to pull Kiyoomi forward. “C’mon, there’s an incredible view up ahead.”

Undoubtedly.

===

_viii. A many-splendored thing_

They’re walking the streets at night, the streetlamps glowing amber against the soft yellow of the buildings. Atsumu roused Kiyoomi from a dead sleep not even twenty minutes ago, promising him a true local experience.

Kiyoomi walks beside him sleepily, because sometimes love is humoring late night escapades in a foreign country on nothing but a whispered promise.

Suddenly, Atsumu stops them, tilts his face upward, and sniffs delicately.

“Do you smell it, Omi-kun?”

Sweet. Sugar permeates the air, an almost sickeningly saccharine odor wafting through the streets. His mouth waters instinctually, and he is incredulous.

Kiyoomi wants to make a joke right now, wants to laugh at the absurdity of he, Sakusa Kiyoomi, trailing after Miya Atsumu at 2:37 a.m. in the middle of Florence as he literally follows his nose. The way night falls on this city is some kind of quiet magic that keeps his tongue at bay though, content to follow Atsumu like a lucid dream.

They turn down an alley and the smell grows stronger. A small line of figures huddle against doorways and walls in a haphazard queue. Someone lets out a bark of raucous laughter and the surrounding people shush them urgently. Atsumu makes a grand “ta-da” gesture, smiling like this strange gathering of people in a back alley of Florence is peak Italian culture.

“See, I knew we’d find it!” he shout-whispers, dragging them over to the line. At the front, a trio knocks on an otherwise-unassuming door. After a few seconds, a figure pokes their head out, and they conduct a brief exchange of words and coins. They close the door and return shortly with a couple of steaming pastries.

“What is ‘it’?” Kiyoomi squints at the scene, trying to make sense of it but wholly unequipped to do so.

“This, my dear Omi-kun, is a secret bakery. Well, maybe a not-so-well-kept secret. I heard about it from one of the locals.” Apparently, Atsumu goes on to explain in a whisper, these bakeries operate in the middle of the night to supply the cafés in the morning with their array of fresh goods. They also run a brisk business on the side to bring fresh, warm pastries to the hungry and adventurous night crowd, though that part is all very much under the table.

It’s just like Atsumu to pry the secrets of this city free within a matter of days, rooting out wonders with ease and charm. It makes Kiyoomi ponder at how much Atsumu knows the corridors of Kiyoomi’s own heart, has learned the twists and turns of his secrets, a map writ in every set of his shoulders and quirk of his brows.

By the time they clutch two warm bomboloni of their own and Kiyoomi bites into the best pastry he has ever had, bar none, Kiyoomi rethinks his belief that he would only remember the images of this trip as a kind of splendid background to Atsumu’s whole being. 

In the cloaked intimacy of the night, Kiyoomi catches the glint in Atsumu’s eyes and knows this: he’ll remember all of this night, the sugar cloying in his nose, the burst of freshness in the warm cream filling, Atsumu’s soft humming in his ears, the brush of their shoulders as they duck away from the city nightlife, and of course, the cut of Atsumu’s profile against the night’s fabric.

===

_ix. A blue more precious than gold_

_Lapis lazuli_ , the audio guide drones through his earbuds, _is a semi-precious stone prized for the intense, iridescent color blue it produces. During the Renaissance, it was more expensive than gold, and often reserved for the most important and religious subjects in paintings. The deep, unique blue scattered with miniscule reflective minerals evokes imagery of the celestial, and for this reason, Pliny the Elder called it “a fragment of the starry firmament…”_

The blue in the painting is indeed a brilliant hue. It echoes the purest, clearest summer skies, a deep and breath-taking color, at once opaque and translucent. It doesn’t evoke that entirely in the folds of the Virgin Mary’s clothes, however. Mysterious and serene, sure, but perhaps the full effect is lost a bit in Kiyoomi’s lack of piety. Her downcast gaze doesn’t help inspire the heavens in Kiyoomi’s heart.

Kiyoomi glances to his side, where Atsumu stares at the same painting, lips parted slightly as his eyes rove to each part the narrator details. The lines of his profile—furrowed brow, a crinkle at the corner of his eye, the fine line of his nose and the set of this mouth—are the art that Kiyoomi craves to study now, the kind that his heart aches to trace their paths, their trajectory, the juncture of their poetry in the song of his being.

Atsumu isn’t a color but he, too, feels like a fragment of the starry firmament. Light and bright—sound and fury signifying _something_ greater than Kiyoomi can hope to fathom sometimes. He is a meteor—a lightning quick, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, magnificent phenomenon. The kind that makes you feel impossibly small and improbably invincible. 

Once, Kiyoomi read that without the words for something, we can’t truly know it. Homer’s wine-dark sea wasn’t actually the color of wine, but neither did Homer see it as blue, because “blue” did not exist in ancient Greece. Japan, too, didn’t distinguish between blue and green until relatively recently. There are cultures with no word for blue that cannot distinguish it from green, and conversely many words for green that can single out a green of slight variance from a group with ease. 

Maybe that’s why Kiyoomi has difficulty knowing his love for Miya Atsumu. He loves him, but love is one word for many feelings and countless experiences. One word that cannot possibly capture the essence of it all and distinguish it from the rest. Is love something so special then, or just one word for many, affection, adoration, attraction, among others?

He knows he loves Miya Atsumu, but it feels as unknowable as the true color of the sky.

===

_x. The things that could break us_

Their hotel room has a sketch of a balcony, large french doors opening onto a sliver of elevated concrete and wrought iron. There’s a small table and two chairs in their room, and they drag them over to enjoy their coffee in the morning sun, the one day they don’t venture out to explore one of the city’s many cafés. 

Atsumu is back from his run, freshly showered. The sun is well over the horizon, bright on stone walls and warm on their faces. Kiyoomi sips his drink in silence.

“This place suits you, Omi-kun,” Atsumu says, not looking at him, but at the city below. At this time of day, the crowds are still light; mostly locals mill around on the street below, sauntering to work or leisure. 

Kiyoomi hums and glances over at him. “What do you mean by that?”

Atsumu closes his eyes, letting the breeze ruffle his hair. “I don’t know. Nothing specific, really. Just a feeling.” He exhales deeply, “You fit it here, with the people, the food, the art. Good taste, all around,” he laughs a bit, “I’m happy for you, really. I think you’ll be as good for the team here as they will for you.”

Kiyoomi breathes deeply too, catching the phantom taste of fresh bread on the breeze, the whisper of sugar from the bakeries, a hint of petrichor from someone watering plants. Less pleasant city odors too—exhaust, trash. It smells alive, bustling. He doesn’t get it. If anyone fits in here, it’s Atsumu, bright and warm.

When they talked about this, about Kiyoomi’s offer, the move, they didn’t talk about _them._ They focused on the logistics. Does Kiyoomi pay his share of the apartment while he’s gone? What kind of things aren’t easy to find in Italy that he would want to have from Japan?

What will he take with him?

(Two suitcases, his warm winter jacket, a lot of dashi powder, sesame oil, apparently an exorbitant expense here).

What will he leave behind?

(Their plants, his extra-warm winter jacket, Atsumu).

They don’t talk about that last one. Not a lot of their relationship involved words to start with, and it works. They fell into friendship, then they fell into love. It was quiet, unlike the rest of their antics. They moved in together when more of their things were at each other’s places than their own. Then Kiyoomi got an offer, and Atsumu bought a cake to celebrate. Going through with it though, this might be a test or a testament to something.

Atsumu made this set. It’s arcing beautifully, gracefully, entirely balanced, exactly the way Kiyoomi wants it, with options, with choices for a response.

He examines his approach. To stay, to go, to ask Atsumu to wait, to push Atsumu away.

He wants him to wait.

Can he ask such a thing of Atsumu? When he knows Atsumu would give him the world?

“A vacation is different from living long-term,” Kiyoomi finallys settles on. None of the above. “But,” his eyes slide over to Atsumu, still looking out at the city, “it’s different when you’re here too.”

And Atsumu shakes his head. He blinks slowly, inhales deeply, and smiles. “Nah, won’t be that much different without me.”

===

_xi. My thoughts intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee_

There are many churches here in Florence. The hours chime with a chorus of bells across the city. Saints and other eternal, impassive figures watch over the populace from altars and paintings and statues. The wind often carries a hint of candles and incense and quiet, pious murmurs or solemn song.

Religion doesn’t mean much to Kiyoomi. Japan’s own mix of theologies didn’t sway him to one god or another. He has the barest of understandings of the religion in this land, thanks to an introductory art history course, but he thinks much may be lost in translation, so to speak.

Kiyoomi is not religious, but he knows devotion: the effort of everyday, the rituals of the ordinary that build to the exceptional. Loving Miya Atsumu is all of those things. 

Effort. To tease out Atsumu’s caprices and unearth his private, steady foundations. Finding the soft center behind his hard edges. Matching his consistency, his care, in every and any way that can meet it.

Rituals. Their morning runs at 7:05 on the dot (7:15 in winter), the same path along the Daini Neya river every day. Atsumu’s eight-step skincare routine. Kiyoomi’s steady motions making coffee for the two of them while Atsumu makes breakfast, a well-practiced symphony of movement in their narrow kitchen.

And, of course, there is worship to be found in their touch. Innocent, intimate, and everything in between. Praise in working his fingers with touch-up dye and toner through Atsumu’s locks every sixth week. Providence in Atsumu’s steady hands that guide his lengthy stretch routine. Miracles in the mornings when Kiyoomi wakes up with Atsumu’s arms around his waist and his hair tickling his nose. 

What will those motions be without the man beside them? Will there still be a godliness in them? Split over eight hours and four seas and countless mountain ranges, they’ll carry the absence of Atsumu as much as the substance of him in them, maybe a comfort, maybe a curse.

===

_xii. Recessional_

Kiyoomi’s temporary contract with APF starts in October. It’s five months away, but here, on the cusp of summer and the nebulous period of the off-season, it presses at the base of Kiyoomi’s spine and drips down his shoulder blades uncomfortably with his sweat.

Atsumu walks slightly ahead, guiding their way up the hill and towards some grand old building or another. 

Are they breaking up? Kiyoomi doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to think about it. Everything that brought them together never needed words before, but that means neither will breaking them apart. The crumble could be slow, a corrosive rust instead of warm patina wearing away at the shine. Or fast, a catastrophic collapse of a bridge, their foundation ill-constructed, poorly planned, worn away by currents hidden deep under water.

A year is a long time, but it’s not forever. There’s something tragic about a promise over distance. It’s a tenuous thing, holding the aching knowledge that we can never know for sure what the next day, the next hour, the next moment holds for us even as the promise strains to connect across mountains and seas and timezones.

There are two visions in Kiyoomi’s mind, one at an arrivals gate, one at a departures gate. The first one is joyous, but quiet, shy smiles, and a hands gripped with certainty. The second is tense, anxiety palpable despite the frenetic energy of drop-offs and security gates. Hands squeezing good-byes that words can’t impart, eyes not quite meeting, too afraid to be the final look.

He’s not sure if a promise can bear the weight of either fate, or if Atsumu wants to pull as fiercely as Kiyoomi will to hold the line between them taut. 

If there’s anything that Itachiyama taught him, he remembers with violent clarity that there’s no guarantees. 

===

_xiii. No bridge that I won’t burn_

If you spend enough time in Florence, Kiyoomi and Atsumu quickly learn, you tend to avoid this bridge for most of the day, heavily trafficked with tourists and students alike, eager to marvel at the centuries-old structure and the ancient shops built up on its edges, now more whimsical than functional. Hordes flock to the center of the bridge for selfies and picturesque views of the Arno, and otherwise peruse the leather and gold goods shops along the sides. It is an easy landmark between distinguishable areas of the city, rather than chance misdirection along the mazeways further up or downstream, and so the crowds funnel in one end and funnel out the other, endlessly slow.

Supposedly, in the war, as forces retreated through the city they destroyed the many bridges crossing the Arno—save for this one. The tour guide waxes poetic about Ponte Vecchio’s inherent value, recognizable even at a most desperate and destructive time.

It’s difficult to picture that and all its Renaissance glory while dodging selfie sticks and ignoring the glittery expanse of modern jewelry shops, but something about the bridge feels majestic and magic despite it all. Kiyoomi can still see why it would even stay the hands of war.

Kiyoomi’s not sure if he would show the same restraint, given a mass retreat, a full withdrawal from something or someone. He’s all or nothing; there can be no water under the bridge if the bridge is gone. He understands, but loathes the polite, professional games they play outside the game they play, ones built from connections between people. Don’t burn any bridges, goes the conventional wisdom, and Kiyoomi smoulders at the thought.

It is especially unwise in a world so small as professional volleyball, so it astounds him at how he let the span between himself and Atsumu grow so elaborate, so precious. It’s built on pillars of their shared sport like many others, but now has its own structures on top, detailed stonework over an old foundation, storefronts that deal in cooking meals, making bets, splitting chores, playing volleyball. Secret corridors between two hearts. Love and all its minutiae piled on top, then fortified with time.

The Ponte Vecchio escaped flames but not flood; its predecessor swept away by raging waters, twice. And so Kiyoomi worries at that—that a surge of feelings could be their undoing. 

===

_xiv. What the plants say_

Florence is a city of stone, and its oases of green are all the more precious for it. They’ve been to the Tuscan countryside and stayed in the city otherwise, but not much in between, until now. Atsumu leads them upwards, the roads growing narrower and the houses further apart. The buzz of Piazzale Michelangelo and its flock of charter buses dropped off a while back, and now there’s only the sounds of their footsteps on pavement, breaths labored minutely from the sun and the hill.

For all of Atsumu’s impeccable sense of direction, this is the first time Kiyoomi has a niggling of doubt.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Kiyoomi calls again, eyeing the empty field stretching out behind a gate they pass.

“Positive. Don’t worry so much, Omi-kun,” Atsumu flaps a hand back at him.

They hike. Atsumu leads the way, though Kiyoomi suspects there is no “way” and Atsumu is going entirely by instinct or whim. Probably a little of both. They wind up narrow roads, eventually too narrow for anything other than tiny Italian cars and pedestrians. It is notably quiet.

Atsumu slows. “I think it’s right ahead, actually.”

Turning one last corner brings them to a small road that cuts across their path, a long fence along its far side. A narrow, but dense grove of cypress to their right runs the other length of the road. The woods have a small stone monument, and a plaque. It’s in a few languages, excluding Japanese, but Kiyoomi susses out from the English that this is a memorial of some sort. They step into the cool shade of the miniature forest together.

They find a small, fairly level patch of ground with a view of the landscape on the other side of the fence, and settle down to the ground. Atsumu pulls out water and snacks from his bag, and they relax under the shade of the cypress trees.

“They’re kinda...eerie, don’t you think?” Atsumu says at one point, idly looking up at the canopy above them. “Creepy trees. Creepy Italian trees.”

“Classical symbolism for cypress in this part of the world was association with death and mourning,” Kiyoomi replies, “and this is a memorial park, after all.”

“Ah, not saying anything bad about the place. I took you up here for a reason, you know, to find you a spot in the city that’s not the city, if you need it. Just haven’t had a chance to look at these trees up close. They’re bigger than they look all dotted-like out there,” he says, gesturing to the view in front of them. 

It’s a now-familiar enough swathe of Tuscan scenery. There’s the gentle undulations of mountains that became rolling hills in a gradient of rich greens, gnarled olive trees dotting wide fields, and cypress trees cutting toothy grins into the horizon. Tall grasses, dotted with wildflowers and weeds, hug the edge of the road. It’s the first part of the city they’ve seen that doesn’t feel exalted, venerated, carefully attended to, or restored and preserved. Merely nature, planted in memory, sparingly tended, allowed to grow and flourish.

“ _Keep me close to the edge, where everything wild begins,_ ” The words come unbidden to Kiyoomi’s mind and tumble gracelessly from his mouth. 

Atsumu throws a questioning glance his way, and Kiyoomi answers instinctively. Stuttering for memory and the foreign pronunciations, he recites the verse:

> _Weed, it is you with your bad reputation that I love the most. Teach me not to care what anyone has to say about me. Help me to be in the world for no other purpose at all except for the joy of sunlight and rain. Keep me close to the edge, where everything wild begins._

Atsumu laughs. “Did you just call me a weed?”

“Yes,” Kiyoomi answers, surprised, “but romantically, if that makes it better.”

Atsumu brushes a hand though the grass in front of them, wavers at plucking a lone flower, then seems to think better of it and draws his hand back. He turns and reaches out to push back a stray curl behind Kiyoomi’s ear instead, and smiles.

“It does,” he says, and they lean in to meet.

===

_xv. Piazza della passera_

The way that Florence’s roads and alleys close into themselves on the south side of the river feels different, more intimate. The Oltrarno’s tall buildings and narrow passageways hug the passersby as they twist and turn and lead you from one secret to the next. Twilight falls earlier, steeping the streets in a quiet kind of romance, a vintage palette mixed from dusk’s blues and the pale yellow and cream architecture.

It’s date night. Practically speaking, it’s been date night every night on this trip, but this one coincides with their usual one at home, so they put in a little more effort. Gone are simple tourists Atsumu and Kiyoomi. Atsumu wears a blazer. Kiyoomi puts on his one button-up and actually buttons it up.

They made reservations at an upscale restaurant in Santo Spirito. The gnocchi Kiyoomi consumes is perhaps the most divine iteration of a potato he’s ever had the fortune to encounter. Atsumu, remarkably, nearly reaches his appetite’s limit. They leave, sated, stuffed, loose-limbed from the wine and warm from the quiet murmurs around them and between them. Atsumu’s eyes glowed golden in the flicker of the candlelit table, and they continue to glimmer after stumbling out into the cool air of night.

They stop at a gelateria across the piazza, so small it feels like a literal hole-in-the-wall, barely room for the counter and the server, much less two large volleyball players inside. Atsumu’s shoulder brushes Kiyoomi’s as they crane their necks over the cooler to pick their flavors, and Kiyoomi shivers at the touch.

As they meander back the long way to their hotel, gelato in hand, Kiyoomi’s fingers itch for something. For Atsumu’s camera, maybe, to make his own secret of this evening, this moment. For Atsumu’s hand, definitely. After days of easy companionship, here among strangers, he no longer hesitates.

Atsumu’s hand is cool and dry in his own. Kiyoomi feels more than sees the contented smile beside him, wide but close-lipped. Atsumu’s calluses have yet to soften after only a week’s respite from practice, so it tingles when he runs his thumb across Kiyoomi’s knuckles.

Instead of fire, Atsumu is ice, drawing at Kiyoomi’s warmth, prickling sensations at the tips of his fingers working into his blood, a sudden realization at the cold, a hunger to be warm again. They’ll sink into each other like that, ravenous, a little desperate, a little wild, in a short while yet, but for now Kiyoomi lets the blanket of evening draw him closer, to keep warm.

===  
  


_xvi. First times_

It’s their second to last full day and their first fight on this trip.

They don’t argue often—not about serious things. They’re combative and adversarial at practice sure, but that’s for fun. There’s an ease in understanding, one without words, in most other respects.

It starts at the Accademia. They don’t have reserved entry and the line is long, already stuffy in the late morning. They woke up later than usual, and both their tempers are short because of it, Atsumu without a run, Kiyoomi without a proper breakfast, sweet or otherwise.

Atsumu is quieter than usual. Kiyoomi thought it was the lack of sleep or the lack of routine or the mind numbing boredom of a queue, but it’s more acute once they are inside. This would be a place ripe for his corny jokes and his playful mock poses with the stern statues. Kiyoomi expects some crude and hilarious comment at the main draw, the statue of David. But Atsumu is taciturn, almost blatantly surly, movements efficient, but rough.

It’s awfully hard to appreciate some pinnacle of sculpture when Kiyoomi reads the storm clouds gathering in Atsumu’s brow. Kiyoomi’s own head stings with the phantom of a headache. 

It only worsens as the day plods on, and comes to head as they wait in line for a bus to Fiesole, just north of Florence, and supposedly home to a stunning sunset view. It’s late afternoon though, and the crowds swell immensely with locals and tourists. The bus is late, and crowded. They pile on, but the way Atsumu holds himself, one step from feral, has Kiyoomi hitting the stop button well within the Florence city limits. Atsumu only flashes him a confused face when he pulls the two of them off the bus and down a quiet side street.

“Hey, you’re not okay,” Kiyoomi says, lightly gripping Atsumu’s shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

Atsumu shrugs his shoulders and dislodges Kiyoomi’s hands. “I’m fine. Tired, like you,” he says dully, sparing a concerned look back at Kiyoomi. “Don’t worry about it. Probably a good thing we got off the bus. Let’s just go find some food.” And he spins around, stalking off down the street.

“Atsumu, what is this really about?” Kiyoomi tries to keep the frustration from his voice, but it takes an edge, ricochets off the nearby buildings. Atsumu almost flinches, shoulders hiking up, then falling, dejected. 

“You know, I really think you are gonna make it work here, you’re really gonna be alright,” Atsumu says, turning back to face Kiyoomi. “And I was really, really okay with it, okay? I never once thought you shouldn’t take this chance.

“And I know you think I wanted this trip to see it with my own eyes, right? You’re right, it was,” Atsumu voice rising a little and speeding up. “But, the more we’re here and the more I see how you’ll be okay, the less it felt like I would. Not because I need you, or you need me,” Atsumu holds a hand up to Kiyoomi’s protest, “but because suddenly it was very real to me that you’ll be over here carrying on as usual, but anything could happen. You’ll be growing and changing and me too—what if we end up growing apart?”

“Atsumu,” Kiyoomi almost chokes on the lump in his throat, “Atsumu, we’re—we’re going to be okay. This doesn’t change things between us. It changes the logistics, sure, but I still love you, and still will love you.”

“You’re _leaving,_ Kiyoomi,” Atsumu’s voice drops, all but a whisper. “And of course I know you’ll be back, but we won’t be the same, for better or worse.”

===

_xvii. Memento mori_

This city breathes with the past.

It reminds him of Japan. Juxtaposing the old and the new, like ancient temples and churches abutting modern convenience stores, or streets with glossy glass storefronts and neon lights perpendicular to alleys with old wooden doorways you have to duck through. 

There’s something of home in that feeling, and it brings comfort to Kiyoomi. The past is gone, the future is unknown, but they meet in the middle in their strange little present.

He will take solace in that symbiosis whenever he thinks about the kilometers between Atsumu and him, not severed by centuries, but suddenly offbeat, off time, coexisting through screens and apps instead of a heartbeat away.

Tonight, Atsumu is not ten thousand kilometers away or a hairsbreadth apart. His back is a mere ten inches from Kiyoomi's chest, the greatest chasm he could forge from this narrow double bed. He is asleep, against all odds, chest rising evenly, breaths light.

Kiyoomi is something of a fatalist, he knows. Atsumu is more of an optimist, he thinks. Diametric opposites, in a way, but of the same spirit, in another. In other words: here lies Miya Atsumu, asleep, because the emotional burdens of the now may not be those of the future. And here lies Kiyoomi, awake, because his boyfriend had an emotional breakdown about their imminent long distance separation, and Kiyoomi cannot guarantee it won’t happen again. Doesn’t want it to happen again.

He needs to fix this. He’s been running circles around his head while Atsumu has been wearing circles in his heart, growing anxious at the prospect of their lives and love shifting too much when Kiyoomi goes abroad, misaligned and off-track, conclusions unknown and irreparable.

They are both more about actions than words, but he might need both today.

He will fix this. He must.

===

_xviii. Do you like running?_

Atsumu is stubborn, and likes routine. He still wakes up early for a run on their last full day of vacation, but for the first time since the first day he asks if Kiyoomi wants to join him. It will be worth it, he insists, dangling promise and challenge in front of Kiyoomi’s sleep-addled brain in a way that he knows will work.

Yesterday is still a tender wound and last night still weighs with heavy exhaustion on Kiyoomi’s chest, but Kiyoomi recognizes an overture from Atsumu. He rises, pulls on his trainers, and meets Atsumu in the lobby.

“Literally no one else is out right now,” Kiyoomi huffs once they start moving, an attempt at normalcy. 

“Trust me, okay? Omi-kun?” Atsumu pants lightly beside him. 

The city is silent, its founts of revelry and liberal wine not long shuttered, but dark. The sun isn’t quite up yet, hovering just below the horizon, and a hushed fog engulfs the streets, murky and timeless. They could’ve stepped right into the middle ages. Around the next corner they could run into Dante himself, still yet to divine poetry from the stones of his city.

It’s silent, but Miya Atsumu is loud, bright, bearing dawn on his heels, breathing life into a city still asleep. With Atsumu by his side he sees a different world. The dim streaks of sunrise break over Santa Croce in a mosaic of rainbow colors, more magnificent than any man-made stained glass. They reach the river and dawn’s fingers creep across the water in multi-colored feathers. A bird reels overhead, undisturbed and timeless.

They cross the Arno one bridge over from Ponte Vecchio. Atsumu guides them along a long, narrow road. It starts to incline, and with a sideways glance and grin as their only challenge, they pick up their pace.

The hill to the top of Piazzale Michelangelo is brutal. The long stone steps bear them up without mercy—wide enough to sprint, short enough to make zero impact on the slope. They reach the top out of breath, sweating heavily, panting in the cool morning air. When they catch their breath, Atsumu doesn’t say anything, just beckons him to the left.

Out of the fog a statue of David rises like some ancient god. Before them the city is an ocean, its steeples and towers like buoys in an ethereal sea.

“I wanted to see the sunrise with you, here, Kiyoomi,” Atsumu breathes out, hands on his hips, chest to the dawn. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says, sweeping an arm across the horizon.

Kiyoomi only sees Atsumu.

“Yes.” He really is.

===

_xix. We gather here today_

Riding the bus is unlike anything Kiyoomi has encountered in Japan. It very near crawls in the city center, speed encumbered down by oblivious pedestrians, only picking up pace once it reaches the outskirts of the city and starts heaving up the hill towards Fiesole. They pour out of its doors in the main square, blinking fiercely in the midday sun.

Tomorrow morning, they board their flight back to Osaka. Today, though, Atsumu comes alive in these hills. There’s some kind of peace above the heat of the city, beyond the noise. It’s much of the same substance—cypress and olive trees, stone plazas, winding streets, old paintings in older buildings—but Atsumu breathes easier in Kiyoomi’s eyes. No longer a scout. A true tourist, a real vacation.

As the sun arcs low over the hills, they tackle the steepest street yet. The monastery at the top promises the most spectacular spread of the land and city below. They climb in step with each other, legs now accustomed to this hilly terrain, but straining from the long week of long walks. Kiyoomi reaches for Atsumu’s hand halfway up, and Atsumu squeezes back.

When they reach the top, Atsumu pulls free, hustling to the edge of the viewing area with a spring in his step. Kiyoomi lingers behind, a hand in his pocket, a sudden lump in his throat.

For a second, Kiyoomi thinks he must be mad. It must be the air, or the water, or the over-abundant pasta. Maybe he’s drunk by association, the chianti flowing through this land like blood. Then, at second thought, and for the first time this whole week—maybe from the run this morning, maybe by his own resolution—he feels sharp clarity. He knows what he needs to do and wants to say, and how to say it. He swallows.

“Atsumu!” he calls, louder than he intended.

Atsumu spins, wind catching his shirt in a flutter, hair ruffling like a miniature tempest, one eye closed at a stray speck of dust. He’s smiling, luminous.

“What!” he laughs.

 _I love you. I’ll never truly leave you if you’ll have me. You’re beautiful, no, sublime._ There aren’t enough words in this world for what he wants to say to this man. How will he ever truly know him, then? He just knows he wants to spend his whole life finding out.

Somewhere, everywhere, church bells ring the hour.

“Marry me,” Kiyoomi says.

“What?”

“Marry me, Miya Atsumu, today, here, or tomorrow, elsewhere. Someday, somewhere, it doesn’t matter, just please, say yes?” Kiyoomi doesn’t kneel. He steps forward to take Atsumu’s hand with one hand, and presses the ring from his pocket in the palm with his other. Those endlessly distracting jewelry shops on the bridge were useful after all.

“You said after I leave that we won’t be the same, for better or worse?” Kiyoomi rushes to get out the next words. “You’re right, we won’t be the same, but you and me, we always work to be better, don’t we?”

Atsumu’s jaw clenches. His hand closes tight around the ring. Kiyoomi cups it in both of his own, and looks straight into Atsumu’s eyes, holding both of them fast with the weight of his words.

“Let me tell you here and now, Miya Atsumu, I want you—from this moment forward, and for every moment before—to have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health. Until death do us part.”

Bringing Atsumu happiness is a calling, and watching it bloom is a blessing. His bottom lids turn up, the corners of his eyes crease and his brows rise ever so slowly. There’s a little wrinkle in his nose between his eyes when his cheeks dimple, and his mouth curves upwards before his lips part.

He is incandescent. He nods, then he laughs. Then he flings his arms over Kiyoomi’s shoulders and presses into him with a kiss.

=

In the future, when Kiyoomi thinks back on this moment, he won’t remember what they were wearing, he won’t remember the exact line of Atsumu’s smile or when, exactly, they both started crying. Memory is a funny thing, that. But he’s pretty sure, no, adamant, that he’ll remember the exact color of the sky haloed around his beloved as he looks at him framed against the sunset. It is the most brilliant shade of a celestial blue.

He’ll remember that color for the rest of his life. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse my desire to wax poetic about Atsumu through one Sakusa Kiyoomi via the eternal beauty of Florence.  
> I was fortunate to spend a semester in Florence, so most of these references are accurate (but it was [redacted] years ago, so no promises)  
> As I wrote this, I realized this covers similar themes to my “never look away” series, but they’re not intentionally related. I’m really trying to get into Kiyoomi’s headspace for the next part of that series, so think of this as a spiritual relative rather than a direct one. 
> 
> Please come yell at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/tirralirralirra/status/1353636231113039872?s=20), and come see the thread I will link [HERE](https://twitter.com/tirralirralirra/status/1353861032603738112?s=20) for more background information on the references/setting/writing decisions/process for this piece.
> 
> \---
> 
> This is a long notes section, but it could be epic. In an attempt for brevity, please see the thread linked above for full notations on why certain references were used. I will only be marking the direct references/authors here.
> 
> A river runs through - from _A River Runs Through It_ \- Norman McLean  
> On the edge of summer - from the song _Daughter_ \- Vienna Teng  
> Food be the music of love - bastardization of the quote from _Twelfth Night_ \- Shakespeare  
> A many-splendored thing - from the song/movie/book _Love is a Many-Splendored Thing_ (book by Han Suyin)  
> A blue more precious than gold - from [this article](https://hyperallergic.com/315564/lapis-lazuli-a-blue-more-precious-than-gold/) on the use of lapis lazuli  
> Sound and fury signifying something - adapted quote from _Macbeth_ \- Shakespeare  
> My thoughts intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee - _Sonnet 27_ \- Shakespeare  
>  _Recessional_ \- title of the song by Vienna Teng  
> No bridge that I won’t burn - from the song _Ghost_ \- Jeremy Messersmith  
>  _What the plants say_ \- the title of the poem/passage used in the text by Tom Hennen  
> "Creepy trees. Creepy Italian Trees" - this is a reference to the movie _Under the Tuscan Sun_  
>  Do you like running? - Yes this is a KazeTsuyo/Run with the Wind reference  
> We gather here today - i.e. "Dearly beloved, we gather here today..." the opening remarks for both weddings and funerals in many ceremonies


End file.
